PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.

Louis XVI. possessed an immense crowd of confidants,
advisers, and guides; he selected them even from among
the factions which attacked him. Never, perhaps,
did he make a full disclosure to any one of them, and
certainly he spoke with sincerity, to but very few.
He invariably kept the reins of all secret intrigues
in his own hand; and thence, doubtless, arose the
want of cooperation and the weakness which were so
conspicuous in his measures. From these causes
considerable chasms will be found in the detailed
history of the Revolution.

In order to become thoroughly acquainted with the
latter years of the reign of Louis XV., memoirs written
by the Duc de Choiseul, the Duc d’Aiguillon,
the Marechal de Richelieu,

[I heard Le Marechal de Richelieu desire M. Campan,
who was librarian to the Queen, not to buy the Memoirs
which would certainly be attributed to him after his
death, declaring them false by anticipation; and adding
that he was ignorant of orthography, and had never
amused himself with writing. Shortly after the
death of the Marshal, one Soulavie put forth Memoirs
of the Marechal de Richelieu.]

and the Duc de La Vauguyon, should be before us.
To give us a faithful portrait of the unfortunate
reign of Louis XVI., the Marechal du Muy, M. de Maurepas,
M. de Vergennes, M. de Malesherbes, the Duc d’Orleans,
M. de La Fayette, the Abby de Vermond, the Abbe Montesquiou,
Mirabeau, the Duchesse de Polignac, and the Duchesse
de Luynes should have noted faithfully in writing
all the transactions in which they took decided parts.
The secret political history of a later period has
been disseminated among a much greater number of persons;
there are Ministers who have published memoirs, but
only when they had their own measures to justify,
and then they confined themselves to the vindication
of their own characters, without which powerful motive
they probably would have written nothing. In
general, those nearest to the Sovereign, either by
birth or by office, have left no memoirs; and in absolute
monarchies the mainsprings of great events will be
found in particulars which the most exalted persons
alone could know. Those who have had but little
under their charge find no subject in it for a book;
and those who have long borne the burden of public
business conceive themselves to be forbidden by duty,
or by respect for authority, to disclose all they know.
Others, again, preserve notes, with the intention
of reducing them to order when they shall have reached
the period of a happy leisure; vain illusion of the
ambitious, which they cherish, for the most part, but
as a veil to conceal from their sight the hateful
image of their inevitable downfall! and when it does
at length take place, despair or chagrin deprives them
of fortitude to dwell upon the dazzling period which
they never cease to regret.